Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Global Ship Lease Third Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ian Webber, Chief Executive Officer of Global Ship Lease. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us. I hope you've been able to look at the earnings release that we issued earlier today, and been able to access the slides that accompany this call. As usual, slides 1 and 2 reminds you that today's call may include forward-looking statements that based -- that are based on current expectations and assumptions and are, by the nature, inherently uncertain and outside of the companies control. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements due to many factors, including those described in the Safe Harbor section of the slide presentation. We also draw your attention to the Risk Factors section around most recent annual report on Form 20-F, which is for 2016, and was filed with the SEC on April 12 of this year. You can obtain this via our website or via the SEC's. All of our statements qualified by these and other disclosures in our reports filed with the SEC. We do not undertake any duty to update forward-looking statements. For reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures, to which we will refer during this call, to the most directly comparable measures calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP, you should refer to the earnings release that we issued this morning, which is also available on our website. For today's presentation, I'll begin as usual with an overview of our quarter, fleets, our charter portfolio and our strategy. After that, Tom will discuss the wider container shipping market and provide an overview of our financials. I'll then return for brief summary remarks, and we'll then be glad to take your questions. Turning to Slide 3. We've made significant progress since our last earnings call at the end of July. While the business continues to perform…

Thanks, Ian. Over the next few slides, there'll be some recurring themes and these are summarized at the top of slide 9. Vis-a-vis that one, after a long challenging period, the industry is recovering from cyclical lows with demand growth now outpacing that to supply. Two, the order book has been rightsizing overtime as the industry adjusts to a combination of capital constraints and a new demand growth paradigm of single-digit, rather than double-digit growth. Three, improving supply demand fundamentals are supporting earnings in the spot charter market, and four, and this is the very heart of the GSL value proposition. We believe industry dynamics are most attractive from midsize and smaller ships, which makeup the GSL fleet and represent our focus to growth going forward. As we see it, these segments are said to be supply constrained, while also being called to most trade lanes. The chart at the base of this slide, underlying the points I've just made. On the left, you can see the interplay between demand growth, the dark blue bars and supply growth, the pale blue bars. The jagged red line cutting through the chart is the spot market charter rate index, a parameter of health for the sector. You can see demand growth beginning to overhaul supply growth in 2016, a trend which is accelerated into 2017. And charter rates, the red line, have responded positively accordingly, as long standing oversupply begins to swing back into balance. The right-hand chart shows how the global fleet has evolved since 2007. Most significantly, you can see how the order book-to-fleet ratio, which was noted for 60% in 2007, on the back of speculative orders, largely out of the German KG market, has fallen to 13.5% at the end of September. If you drill down further, as…

Thank you, Tom. We've been very busy, we've extended our full fleet employment with top tier counterparties and we've continued to generate stable predictable cash flows and earnings. We've got contracted revenue of $518 million, on a weighted average remaining contract term of 3.3 years. We've continued to maintain high vessel utilization and close control of costs. Since July, we've secured 2 charter extensions, each 12 months and a new charter for the Tianjin or with CMA CGM, and all of which are on an EBITDA positive basis. This ensures that we do not have any vessels coming open during the seasonally weaker winter months and gives us the ability to reenter the market, as a more attractive time in the spring. The market fundamentals for midsize and smaller containerships continue to improve, by creating upward pressure on charter rates and asset values, albeit with some seasonal volatility. We successfully refinanced all of our debt, which we said to be a strategic objective for this current year, through a combination of $360 million of new senior secured notes and $54.8 million of new senior secured term loan provided by Citigroup. The improved terms of our borrowings and particularly achieved on the notes, demonstrate a recognition of the fundamentals strengthening of the market for midsized and smaller containerships. The bank debt brings down the blended cost of debt, whilst also demonstrating continued support from Citi, one of the lenders still active in the sector. With this long-term stability and balance sheet strength now secured, and particularly, given the improving market conditions, we believe that GSL is in an excellent position to create value for its shareholders. And with that, we would now be happy to take any questions that you might have.

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from Peter Levinson with B. Riley.

I guess my question is, if the future is as bright as you say, do you -- if it's safe to assume that will be seeing some insider purchases of stock in the near future, coupled with that, if 0 sell side analyst covering, is it time to re-think the outsourced IR approach?

Goodness. I can't comment on the inside purchases, I could only speak for myself, I can't speak for others and I'm not sure this is the right forum to comment on my appetite for GSL, stock or not. In terms of the sell side coverage, I think in common with other companies in the sector, we have lost analyst coverage, the banks have been retentioning and rethinking, how they look at the whole Marathon sector. And we would hope that having got our refinancing out of the way, that we will create more coverage on the debt side and on the equity side. And we keep in contact with the sell side analysts at all other major banks.

Our next question comes from Joel Ojdana with BAM.

I was just wondering, if you could give me a little bit more color on the daily vessel operating costs for the ships with charter expiring during 2018? So that would be, I guess, the trimmed by the Delmas ships to see a little bit more clarification on what the cost to run each day?

Sure. The average costs year-to-date is around $6400 per day. Now that's come down considerably on prior years, only in 2014, the average operating cost was $7,800 per day. The range across the fleet is not as great as you might think. It doesn't cost twice as much to run a 10,000 TEU vessels as a 5,000 TEU vessels, I said the range is maybe, sort of 5750 through to 7250. So I would use the higher number for the larger ships.

I'm sorry, could you repeat the bottom end of that range?

5750, roughly.

Okay. And roughly, right now, in the spot market for those roughly 2,200 TEU ships, what kind of daily rates are you saying?

Well, we fixed, we renewed our charters earlier last month, actually 2 months ago now, because we're in November, at $7,800 per day, I think that's a reasonable indication of market rates.

You think [indiscernible] currently?

So what I would add to what Ian just said is that the $7,800 a day is up from roughly $6,000 to $6,500 a day, which is where rates were for this type of vessels, this time last year, to give you a sense of the trajectory of rate movement.

Our next question comes from Howard Blum with UBS Financial.

With the refinancing, there were some pay-down requirements, as you have outlined in the different portions of your debt over the next few years, but your cash flow is obviously, well in excess of that. You've stated that you're looking to be opportunistic about acquiring new ships to bring down the average age of the fleet. If you're not able to do that on terms that you think are attractive, would the company consider reinstating a dividend? And are there any restrictions about dividends in the new indenture?

We're focused on developing the business and growing our portfolio ships, in the same way that we did after we refinanced in 2014, when we replaced restricted bank debt with more flexible high yields. That gave us the opportunity of investing resources and growing the fleet, we added the 3 OOCL vessels, that increased our EBITDA run rate by about 1/3 and that put us in a position to be able to pay the dividend, which we did at the end of 2015. This refinancing, we see in a similar way, it creates 5 years of runway before new debt maturity. We are committed to delivering along the way, and we do have our resources to invest in growing the business and that will be our near-term focus. So near term, we would be looking at investment opportunities and as Tom outlined, we believe that such opportunities do exist in the market. If we are, completely hypothetically, unable in a reasonable timeframe to grow the business, then we would look at the other central uses of cash, which would be proactive delivering, and or -- returning cash to equity. But they are controls over that [indiscernible] second part of your question. The terms of the secured notes precludes us from our contemplating a dividend on the common until 2021. And we are very comfortable with that because a near-term we want to focus our resources on growing the business as we've described.

[Operator Instructions]. Our next question comes from Dillion [indiscernible] with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Regarding your working capital, it seems that the main valuation are coming from the good expenses, which are lower in the third quarter and are growing again, at the end of the fourth quarter. Could you just tell us what is your good expenses? And is this pattern going to be repeated every year? How it move quarter-over-quarter, if there is a pattern?

The main complainant of that is accrued interest. The interest on our existing notes for 2019 maturity is payable on March 31 and September 31, and on new notes, its payable in mid-April and mid-November. So there are a couple of quarters, where we're building up a big liability for interest and then it suddenly collapses to 0, as we pay it down.

So when were the [indiscernible] due on the previous bonds and loans?

March 31 and September 30.

I'm showing no further questions. I would now like to turn the call back Mr. Ian Webber for any further remarks.

Thank you very much. And thanks for your questions and your time and we look forward to giving you a further update on the business after Q4, so in 2018. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This concludes the program. You may all disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.